


Sugar and Gold

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Canon - Anime, Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Crushes, F/M, Introspection, Light Angst, Long-Distance Relationship, Post-Anime, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7738393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You’ve loved her for a long time,” Spirit said, staring at the back of Stein’s head. After a moment, Stein’s shoulders drooped, his mouth downturned, chest burning.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“Yes, well, if this is love, it’s horrible.”</i></p><p> </p><p>Marie left. And Stein wondered why that hurt so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sugar and Gold

It had been a week. 

Her bags had been packed for all too long, so he couldn’t even pretend his ignorance, not when she’d left with far more than she originally came to Death City with. All the extra clothes that she’d went shopping for on the days she’d wanted a distraction, and the handmade picture frames that her students gifted her, and the cards all her classes signed, wishing her well, ended up stuffed in too many suitcases, filling them to the brim.

Marie left with twice as much luggage as when she first stepped into the lab, and now he looks at it and still sees all the things she could not take with her: the purple couches and the coffee tables and the plants in his living room, once simply an office/desk room, and, supposedly, just that once again now that she has left. He sees the teacup she’d decided to leave behind, telling him he needed proper cups, and the teapot and the watering can in the shape of an elephant. She had left so much, as though an effort to fill the gaping spaces of his life. Truthfully, the living room looks exactly as she left it. Not a single thing out of place.

Except for her. And that is what makes it so achingly empty.

It had been a week. He had known she would leave. How could he not have known? She had no reason to stay, his partner. Ex-partner. He wasn’t seeing skittering Kishin eyes in the corners of the lab anymore and he was fit to teach. She had a continent to protect, people that needed her to assure their safety.

She had left her job to find him and once he was back, she had returned. Because what else was she to do? Live in his lab when he was as reclusive as a hermit and half as sociable? When he was barely tolerable on a good day? Was she meant to stand at the Bunsen burners she had arranged in the shape of a stove, cooking and laughing as he sat at the kitchen table she’d dragged in, soaking in the glow of her tender soul? Was she meant to share her life, golden and bright and beautiful and wonderful, with him when he was barely tolerable even to himself?

How could he wish for something so selfish?

And, yet, he had never had problems with being selfish in the past. He was a selfish man. He wanted the world, wanted the knowledge.

He wanted her there, and yet he didn’t want to think about that.

It had been a week. That’s how long it took for Spirit to finally swing by, as he did in the past, conducting his once a month check-ins done in Death’s name to make sure their resident mental patient was still filling his lungs with air. When Marie was with him, there was no need for Spirit’s visits.

Stein is certain Spirit appreciated that.

He’s also certain Spirit does not appreciate standing in the livi- desk room, now. Demoted to chaperoning him, once again, Stein thinks bitterly.

Spirit looks at him, shifting in his seat, which is an eyesore, purple and hideous, bright and obnoxious, and something Stein cannot even think to part with.

“When’s…ah, when’s the last time you ate?” he asked, trying to break Stein out of his general stupor

But all Stein does is shrug, hunched over with his elbows on his knees. He’d been staring off into the distance, eyes locked on the plant Marie’d left behind. He had to water it, soon. Else it would wither. And die. Unbloomed.

“Stein. You need to eat something.”

Stein’s grunt is less absentminded and more irritated, now. It isn’t the words themselves, Marie had said the exact same thing, word for word, to him before. No, it was because those were her words in someone else’s mouth.

Or was it simply because everything reminded him of her? That nothing was untouched by her? He wanted to scrub her clean from him, clean from every single space of his she had managed to fill, because, now, there was only the hollow. There was only the culled out area that her leaving had riddled him with. As though she were a knife, he’d pulled her from his chest and was bleeding out into the floor, waiting for inevitable exsanguination. And the hemoglobin was dripping out of him, slow. She had left a tender, gaping wound in her wake. 

Spirit sighed. “Stein, you have to stop moping. Or…I don’t know, call her, or something. She’ll be happy to hear from you.”

“She’s in Oceania,” he remarked, and his voice sounded empty.

“So? She didn’t kick you out of her life, Stein. She’s still alive.”

Stein said nothing, turning away, even. Whilst Spirit sat on the couch, Stein couldn’t bear it. Most of the time, he’d only sat there when

when Marie was there, as well.

“You did this last time, too.”

“Why are you here, Spirit? Clearly, I’m alive. In one relative piece, save the seams.”

“Because you’re miserable, damnit. What? You’re not going to eat unless she’s holding your hand, now?”

“Fuck off,” Stein said, but there was no bite. His emotions had drained out of him, blood dripping from his chest.

Drip. Drip. Drop.

“Stein.”

Drip.

“Come on. Last time she left, you locked yourself in here for ten years.”

Drip.

“Damnit, stop moping like a child and get up and talk to her!”

Drop.

“She doesn’t want to hear from me, Spirit,” Stein said, and all the passion in Spirit’s voice seemed to deflate.

“What? Why do you think that? Did she say something?”

“She wouldn’t have left if otherwise.”

The silence stretched and stretched, taffy sticky and thicker than molasses when Spirit looked at him, and as Stein glanced up, the pity in his…friend’s? gaze was undeniable.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Stein demanded, and Spirit sighed, closing his eyes and leaning back.

“You can’t be mad that she left.  That’s not fair to her.”

He wasn’t mad that she left.

Was he?

He was-

Certainly he was mad, in general.

But not at her. He was mad at the world, how fitting for  a mad man, meant to be muzzled. Because the truth was that now that the universe had brought her back, now that he’d had her soft smile again, the one that made something in him feel fizzy, though no organ in the human body could possibly lead to such a sensation, now that he had experienced her warmth, the solitude was freezing. He was

he didn’t know. He didn’t know what he felt.

He didn’t know back when she was still there, right in front of him, when she’d gently touch his hand or his shoulder and he’d have to bring his hand up, twist the screw once, twice, a third time until it settled with a dull weight, hoping it would give him some sort of clarity, yet it never did.

When she was still there, he’d felt like there was something he wasn’t understanding, about her. Some itch he couldn’t reach. Something was missing in the puzzle of how Marie fit into his life, something he hadn’t understood yet. When it came to Marie, it felt like that was all she really was: a woman he couldn’t dissect, bodily or otherwise.

“Oh, Stein,” Spirit said, and the understanding was in his voice, now.

Stein wanted that. Wanted to know. What was it about her? What was he missing? What what what?

He wanted Spirit to leave. He wanted to understand. He wanted

what did he want? Who?

“You miss her,” Spirit informed, and Stein could have scoffed.

Yeah? No shit. But it was WHY that concerned him. Why Marie? Why this much?

There were certain facts he could discern. He was accustomed to her presence in his home. He was used to waking up to the smell of coffee on days she would let him sleep in, a fact he was grateful for despite the fact that, before becoming a teacher, he could sleep whenever he wanted to. He had grown expectant of shrugging off the blanket that hadn’t been on him before, moseying to the kitchen to find her with a hand settled on the spot right before her hips flared, giving him an exasperated look as he picked up the mug she’d already prepared: no cream, no sugar.

There were other things, of course. That their laundry got mixed the longer she stayed, that the laundry actually got done, that he ate more than once a day, that he’d walk to her classroom after he was finished with lecture to walk home because no matter how long she was around, no matter how much Death City was homed in her bones, she’d always lose her way. He’d been amused by that, even deep in the misery of the Kishin’s influence, Marie had brought light. Jokes. _Happiness_.

Marie was good for him, but he had been deprived of good things, good people, before and not felt the ache so profoundly. Marie had left once before. He didn’t remember the wound being so severe, then. Perhaps it had been, however. Perhaps it had never closed. He had felt that painful burning inside of him when she’d left, wanting to find it. Where was the location of that hurt? The scar over his chest seemed to throb, dully, as though reminding him of the night he’d peeled his skin open, looking for what was wrong inside of him. What what what?

“Stein…are you okay?” Spirit asks, and Stein’s eyes are seeing through him, his voice choked in his throat as he clenches his fists tight.

“Just a minor pain,” he drones. “It will pass.”

Spirit looks at him critically. Too critically. Stein thought he was the one with soul perception but now it is as though Spirit can see right through him, prying into the meat of the wound.

“No,” he says simply, “it won’t. Not until you get up. You need to shave and shower and call her.”

“She doesn’t want-“

“You don’t know what she wants, Stein. It isn’t fair of you to assume.”

“Any Meister can read his weapon.”

“You can’t even read yourself right now,” Spirit replies, heated, and the spark of fury ignites in Stein’s bones before he can even think.

“And you’re the expert, Senpai?” Stein sneers, making Spirit flinch. “Learned that from your wife and daughter?”

“Stop-“

“How is Kami? Is _she_ taking your calls?”

“Marie isn’t-“

“Marie is gone!”

“And you’re keeping her things in here like a tomb!” Spirit spits, standing up, his face pained and pinched. “You’re sitting here, moping, unwilling to call her. You’re a pathetic, lovesick bastard!”

“I’m not-“

“Bullshit!” Spirit proclaims, and though Stein hasn’t left his seat, he is tensed as a wire coiled too tightly. “Bullshit you’re not lovesick! Look at you!”

“I can’t love, Spirit,” Stein spat out, his eyes furious and almost sad, and he hid them away as he, finally, fully turned from Spirit, wheeling to his desk where all that was in front of him was the simple things: medicine and corpses and diseases he could figure out. “Get out.”

“Damnit, Stein, listen to me! You _love_ her. You know that, somewhere.”

“Get. Out.”

“Why can’t you just face it? Why do you have to-“

“Because it hurts,” Stein finally blurted out, and he sounded so tired that Spirit felt rooted to the spot. And he regretted saying it immediately.

“…Stein-”

“Get out.”

“She didn’t want to leave.”

“Yes, well, she did, in the end. Just as everyone else had.”

“She was the only one who didn’t give up on you. Don’t give up on her.”

“The facts are facts. She is gone. And I’d appreciate if you left, as well, before I turn your lungs around so they face backwards.”

“She’s just a phone call away.”

“She’s a half a world away.”

“There’s no shame in being hurt by her leaving, but don’t be mad at her. She didn’t want to go.”

“I have an experiment to finish, Spirit.”

“Just tell her the truth! Just tell her you love her! You’re making this so much more of a problem than it should be!”

“I don’t love anyone.”

“Yes, you do. You love her. You’ve loved her for a long time,” Spirit said, staring at the back of Stein’s head.  After a moment, Stein’s shoulders drooped, his mouth downturned, chest burning.

“Yes, well, if this is love, it’s horrible.”

The silence dripped and dripped. Stein was almost certain Spirit was about to leave without saying anything else. But, of course, Stein should have known better than to think that Spirit Albarn would ever let anything go.

“Stein…it’s not love you’re feeling right _now_. That was when she was still here.” The space that followed those words was as tense and sad as Stein’s shoulders. “Right now, it’s…it’s longing.”


End file.
